In a ruling issued on January 9, 2009, the state-run media
regulator, the High Communication Council, suspended from circulation the
private daily Le Citoyen for one month for allegedly
violating journalism ethics, according to news reports and local
journalists.

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An appeals court in the Senegalese capital of Dakar upheld a three-year
prison sentence against imprisoned editor El
Malick Seck on February 23, 2009, according to international and local news
reports. The case involved an editorial implicating President Abdoulaye Wade
and his son Karim in an alleged money-laundering scandal.

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A week ago today, CPJ sent a letter
of concern to President Blaise
Compaoré of Burkina Faso urging his government to investigate a series
of death threats sent in the past year or so via e-mail to independent
journalists there. Using Yahoo France
accounts, senders have boasted about intimidating the press in impunity by
referencing the still-unsolved 1998 murder of investigative journalist Norbert
Zongo.

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This week in the mountainKingdom
of Swaziland,
the state-owned daily Swazi Observerreported
that an official has apologized
for summarily dismissing a female reporter from Parliament nearly two weeks ago.
It was the latest in a controversy sparked by allegations of gender
discrimination against Mantoe Phakathi, an award-winning journalist with the
private monthly The Nation.

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We received good news this morning from The Hague, where the presiding judge in the
war crimes trial of Charles Taylor dismissed a request to compel Liberian
journalist Hassan Bility to reveal the identity of a confidential source.

Filmmaker Robyn Kriel, 25, from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, spoke to
PBS' Wide Angle last week about the risks she took
reporting from Zimbabwe in the lead-up to the country's 2008 presidential
election. Last April, CPJ closely followed the case of Kriel's mother, Margaret
Kriel, who was imprisoned
for four days on accusations of "practicing journalism without accreditation." You can listen to the interview here.

Dear Mr. President: We are writing to express concern about a series of death threats aimed at independent journalists that have referenced the unsolved murder of investigative journalist Norbert Zongo in 1998. We call on you to ensure that the government thoroughly investigates these threats and protect the well-being of all journalists.

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Dear Prime Minister: The decision to form a unified government in Zimbabwe has created a welcome opportunity to address oppressive government decrees and media laws that have long stifled press freedom. Your party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has long made freedom of the press a central policy and you have repeatedly stated your aspirations to privatize the state-controlled media.

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When the Committee to Protect Journalists was founded in 1981, the prevailing threats to freedom of the press around the world were still from juntas, dictators, authoritarian regimes, and social systems determined to dominate the media as a means of maintaining control over citizens, usually within the boundaries of the nation-state. Toward that end, newspapers and television were nationalized or controlled by party organs, strict censorship prevailed, and officially sanctioned news was delivered expeditiously.